Durp.

If you haven't jaywalked across Flamingo Rd at least once, are you even at the WSOP?

Hi All
Plan on signing up tonight on bravo app (credit card) for the gladiator tomorrow and landing around 9 AM at the airport. Should there be an issues getting my seat card? If I get to Paris around 930? It will be the first time I’ve used bravo and my first event of the series so I don’t think I can use a kiosk?

Thanks in advance for any info, much appreciated!

I feel like you’d be cutting it close. What are you planning to do with your luggage? That’s too early to check-in for the hotel.

Thank you! Only going with a backpack and staying at a friends house. Don’t care if I miss a round or two I just want to make sure I’m not walking into a cluster with all the normal people registering.

You're going to have to get verified first. I don't think the lines for verification are as long as they were the first weekend. The room was pretty empty every time I walked by.


Once you are verified, they will print off your seat ticket right there so you won't have to use the kiosk except for rebuys or other events. The verification process is very quick as long as there are no lines. I think you'll be ok. You might miss level 1.

Turnout is kinda light so far, 291. But it's early yet. I like to see closer to 1000, but the good old days of 2000+ are gone.

You can verify the evening before once the lines have died down and get your seat assignment for the next day, correct?

Yes. I did exactly that last year and there was no line. Just hand them your ID and your Caesars card and a few seconds later they hand you your seat assignment. After that you can use the app and kiosks and feel pity for the folks waiting in line for registration at the main cage.

As someone curious about the dealing situation during summer/wsop, especially after reading different discussions on the forum in different sub forums and threads, I decided to be friendly with dealers during a quick trip to this years series to obtain information. [I am also aware that some of this information, if in fact accurate, is probably not expected to be spread outside of the industry or wsop, I could care less]

I played cash and tourney/satty's and this was the synopsis after asking direct questions to dealers during the breaks. I would imagine some of this information may not be extremely accurate but I will preface and say the discussion was about dealers experiences/pay/hours post pandemic. My read is that they were being honest, however I also realize if they understand the supply demand of the wsop they may not want to paint the job as very profitable to keep any future applicants away.

i) There has been NO shortage of dealers for the last two years of the world series, there is actually a surplus and some people are being cut daily based upon a system that is supposed to be fair (I'm sure there is some utilization of experience/locality in these decisions). Some dealers (do not know exact percentage) are breaking even or making small profit taking into consideration room and board, food, etc. (Rio is charging approximately $52-$55 per night for dealers). The commonly stated 15k take home per summer for full time dealers that is floating around here and other internet mediums like reddit, is not reached by most dealers, mainly due to excess of dealers or choosing living arrangements outside of whats provided and spending more for comfort.

ii) The cash vs. tourney aspect has always interested me and apparently dealers can choose their preference in alphabetical order via random draw for the starting letter, ex. if they pull #23 then any last name starting with "W" will get first dibs on whether they want to deal tourney or cash and then it goes in order from there.

iii) There is not that large of a difference between take home money between a day dealing tourney's vs a day dealing cash. Stated that obviously the larger games in cash rooms are usually veterans but if you are dealing the 1/3 NLHE and low stakes LHE its approximately the same as the per down rate in the tourney room.

iv) One question I did not get a clear answer for after learning the above, "If there is an excess, then why do I hear about so many dealers that do not know how to deal basic nlhe and make numerous mistakes, why are they being hired and getting hours opposed to experienced dealers who travel to vegas for summers only?" I guess there is some preference for local casino workers even if they are table game people trying to pick up extra work during series.

My thoughts are that wsop probably has a value associated with profit per sqft of the casino(s) used between tourney rake and cash rake, against hourly wages for cage floor dealers runners and others. They don't mind under utilizing the space they do have because it might drive business elsewhere in the casino such as table games, paying less dealers might help the bottom line, hiring them and not using them is only a hassle for HR I guess. The only real negative is potential complaints about long list and people deciding to take cash/tourney action elsewhere but I doubt Caesars minds sending business to competitors. The event is too big and corners the US market to the point where they don't have to provide enough tables even if they have enough dealers, capitalism.

The STS's that were done away with was probably determined to be a losing venture for the casino because at any time a number of dealers that are sitting and not dealing (but being paid) while the floor is advertising and trying to get them going. *Someone mentioned that the STS's were a way to bypass IRS stuff and people selling lammers could essentially make untaxable money hustling them (I don't know enough about gambling income to know the validity of this).

I personally only saw one egregious dealer mistake, a pot that was improperly chopped during a hold em hand, the dealer decided to listen to an angle shooting table captain who never put in the call on the river, floor came and convinced this player to state that he believed he received too many chips (otherwise it was already action happening with the chips in the next hand and there would be no chance to correct). This was the best example I have seen of floor handling what could have been a volatile situation for the player and dealer with tact and reason while still following rulings (this was an experienced floor who I have seen pretty much every series).

Results on the WSOP site are more up to date than THM:

https://www.wsop.com/news/2023/May/1...K-RESULTS.html

Does anyone have a good idea what time 8pm Daily $200 Deepstack makes the money and/or finishes up?

The Gladiators of Poker event finished with just over 23,000 entries. That makes it the second largest field for a poker tournament, still well short of the 28,000 for the Big 50 in 2019. I have to say I'm a little surprised that Gladiators fell that short. I'd be curious as to whether WSOP views this as a success or a disappointment. They made a significant change in their schedule this year by having the $1,000 Mystery Millions as their first multi-flight event instead of kicking off with a $500 or lower event. One wonders if these events had been swapped whether the Gladiators might have come closer to the Big 50. The MM still drew 18,188 entries, which I'm guessing makes it one of their highest grossing events outside of the Main Event, so it's entirely possible that they're more than happy with these two events kicking off the Series.

If staying at Harrahs is it worth it to take the monorail to Paris or just schlep it? Same amount of time?

Good walk to clear the mind get the oxygen flowing, also usually some decent pairs along the way....

Maybe I should say "two pair"

The con of course is that you're exerting energy walking in the sun, but there is no place I love walking more than up and down the Las Vegas Strip. Harrahs down to the ballrooms is no more than a 10 minute walk to, as Hell2Heaven mentioned, get your mind right for a tournament and exist in something aside from poker for a brief moment before plunging into your session.

Asking for a friend, of course, do the "showgirls" on the strip who try to scam guys for paying for pictures ever, uh, how do I put this, offer any extra services? Also, if yes, how much we talking?

Only the $500 and up STS games would take long to fill. And there were several more lower buy ins going, so I would not put much weight into idle dealers. And STS dealers did not have downs* (that is once they started a STS they finished it), so its conceivable there were fewer idle STS dealers than typical buy in events.

I'm guessing WSOP grossed about $200 and up spreading STS games. Depending on the buy in the games would last anywhere from an hour up to 2.5 hours (close to half of the games were chopped). So figure about $150 per hour profit per table after paying dealer + fringe benefits. IMO that compares very favorably with typical buy in events.

IMO what ended STS games:
-IRS. No doubt to me they knew that the lammer system was too easy to commit fraud and they told WSOP to do something about it;

-WSOP IT system. The entire process of paying winners was completely manual, probably the same way they did it when STS games were started 40+ years ago. If they had simply automated the payout process they could have continued STS games w/o IRS scrutiny;

WSOP management. It was a PITA to do the paperwork to process winners. I once had to wait over a half hour to get paid, really for no reason, and 15 minutes was about average. There was nobody in mgmt lobbying for STS games;

-Competition with big events. Logistically it was easier for WSOP (at least they thought) to reserve tables for those events instead of using them for STS games. But IMO this makes no sense because STS tables were used in years past when tournament tables were required. So basically just laziness in managing resources if you ask me;

-Perception of mgmt no longer needing to encourage low cash players with a $180 STS for a $1500 buy in event, when they believe these same players will play in a $600 event directly.

Gross.

I have never paid for sex or pornography and never will, so you're asking the wrong guy. That said, I'm thinking you'd be better off hiring a professional rather than hoping that the showgirls do 'extra'. But again, I'm not the right guy to direct you to such services. Good luck - at the tables... and elsewhere

I think axing the STT's had a lot to do with it. You could enter those for $65 iirc. Even the average 7-11 employee can scrape together $130 for two STT bullets.

Since The Gladiators wasn’t the first event, they couldn’t use all available space. I would estimate they only used bout 425 tables for it, which is pretty far below their current capacity.

But they also didn’t cancel some of the daily deepstacks to make it easier to accommodate more re-entries, which was a surprise to me. So I definitely don’t think they were all that interested in going for “the largest field ever”.

I will be curious to see if this pricepoint returns next year.

+1

Sir, I'm a married man. I don't pay for strange. I told you, I was asking for a friend.

Apologies if this is asked and answered. I searched the thread. Event #42 seems to be one of the only events on Bravo that doesn't have a "Register Now" button. Does that mean no seats available?